One of my to-dos for life was to see an opera, a musical genre with which I'm not very familiar. This made it difficult to narrow one down, but this blog post by Will Kent gave great recommendations for the SF Opera's 2009-2010 season. Based on those, I decided to see "The Daughter of the Regiment" (the link has a video that compiles some excerpts of the performance). I also read that it was a comedy, so I thought that might be easier to understand for my first foray into opera.

photo by Cory Weaver, SF Opera website

The opera itself was fantastic; all the main singers were absolutely breathtaking, with my preference edging towards the two females, Diana Damrau and Meredith Arwady (whose complexities in voice are matched by the complexities of their characters). What surprised me was that despite the comedic plot and acting, I was still moved to tears by some of the music.

What I didn't love was the crowd, especially the lady sitting next to me. It was clear she had been to lots and lots of operas, and represents the opera fan that I was apprehensive about meeting. Some highlights:

Talking to the kid sitting behind us at intermission: "So how do you think this ends? Does it end sadly or happily?"Kid: "Well, it ends happily. I actually read the story before I came."Lady: "Yes, that's the different between a tragedy and a comedy; comedies end happily."

(After curtain rises after intermission, revealing a hilarious staging): [weary sigh] "I HATE it when people applaud for sets."

(After the opera ends, during applause, to woman sitting next to her): "She was good, but not as good as [some other soprano]."

Oh well. Some people just can't be happy unless they're making other people feel stupid. I'd like to go back and see "The Girl Of The Golden West" in June, which is also highly recommended. W and I are trying to gear ourselves up for The Ring of the Nibelung cycle by Richard Wagner in summer 2011; all four operas together are 15 hours over four days. Wonder what kind of endurance training we should do?

We had one big rainstorm last Tuesday (4.5 inches in the Peninsula), and today, another storm is rolling through. San Francisco flooded in parts, and the underground Muni stations closed temporarily at 4:15 pm due to extensive flooding. Here's a video at the Van Ness Muni station (expletive uttered at about 0:42):

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

W and I had to delay our anniversary celebration, since he was deep deep into dissertation writing (he submitted on September 18 - whoo hoo!). I reserved Saturday night at Landis Shores Oceanfront Inn as a surprise. Of course, being October, we hit the pumpkin patch traffic coming in from 92. Luckily, the only thing on our schedule was dinner reservations at 6:30.

It was, of course, overcast, which is to be expected at Half Moon Bay. I loved being right by the ocean; we kept the window to our room open and fell asleep listening to the waves crashing on the shore.

However, my favorite show was The Adventures of Pete and Pete. It was so absurd, and yet so relatable, that I couldn't help but be sucked in. I mean, come on. Kids trying to defy The International Adult Conspiracy by staying up for 11 nights? Dealing with the consequences of answering a pay phone that has been ringing to 27 years? How awesome is that?

My very favorite episode was "The Day of the Dot," which partly dealt with Pete's experience in marching band. Being a marching band geek myself, I found myself nodding sympathetically at the over-the-topness that was mocked marching band culture. This was my favorite scene:

The BBC is reporting on a wirelessly controlled "spider pill" being developed somewhere in Italy. The device supposedly has eight legs and reportedly can crawl through intestines. With an attached video camera, the device might actually become a diagnostic modality for imaging the intestinal tract. The big question is whether it is more unpleasant to have a colonoscope defile you or a robotic gerbil crawl through the insides.

Friday, October 9, 2009

My friend T, who works at Google, showed this to us this week. If you type, "I like" in the Google search box, the first suggested search is "I like to tape my thumbs to my hands to see what it would be like to be a dinosaur."

Thursday, October 8, 2009

As per unintentional tradition, the first day of shooting with First Exposures happened to be the Love Parade - except now it's called LovEvolution. For some reason, I was self-conscious about taking photos of the revelers (I'm usually reluctant to join in with other gawkers when I'm not part of the in-group), but I did manage to snag this shot of these two dudes keeping their heads in their chess game despite all the ravey activity going on around them.